Why aren't they burying the reactors?
Any thoughts on the possible reasons for why the Japanese are not burying the plants with concrete and prevent further let out of radiation into atmosphere? thanks
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Any thoughts on the possible reasons for why the Japanese are not burying the plants with concrete and prevent further let out of radiation into atmosphere? thanks
From what I have read, the
From what I have read, the reactors need to cool down before they can be buried. Furthermore, burying is probably not a good idea in an area that regularly gets earthquakes.
There is no quick fix to this mess.
There's a reason why so many people oppose nuclear energy.
Lets hope for the best, and godspeed to the heroes risking their lives to get his situation under control.
I suspect...
I suspect that they believe that they can get this under control, clean it up, and get the two reactors, that were not damaged, back online and generating electricity again. The cost involved in getting a nuclear power plant up and running is so high that the initial costs have to be amortized over many decades for the electricity to be competitively priced. I worry that the astronomical losses involved in abandoning the site have rendered the people in charge incapable of making fully rational decisions. I sure hope that I am wrong.
By human nature, I'm
By human nature, I'm definitely worried about radiation exposure to me and my family sitting 5000 miles away. Although Bay Area issues dominate mind share, I do once in a while think about Japanese people just a few miles away from the site of the crisis. I wonder whether their so called leaders think about their own people as much as I am concerned them!! I am sure people want cancer free life more than electrical power. I won't be surprised if decision makers sitting in safe bunkers are concerned more about economics!! Kinda sounds like a slightly modified form of Libya!!
That's a great question!
That's a great question! Now, the Japanese are "suspecting" breach of the core of the reactor - i.e., after two of their own men burnt their legs! To say the least, their government is not forthcoming with real data and don't seem to care about the welfare of their citizens. Now, let's talk about US and CA - same story; very consistent messages! Miniscule amount of radiation!! Is there such a thing as miniscule amount that is "harmless"?
And, let's talk reality here - even though the amount of radiation is less than say, dental X-ray - we don't get X-ray every day, every hour, every minute. But, we are exposed this radiation every second!! Won't that do any harm?
Finally, why the hell can't these guys put an end to this weeks old saga forever by burying those stupid reactors? Seems like they'll lose a lot of money doing that. Does anyone know what these fuel rods are worth? There must be some economics behind not burying this crap!!
We are providing this
We are providing this information as an academic endeavor and independent monitoring service. It is intended to be objective data with very little commentary. You can clearly read for yourself the numbers for radioactivity we have posted and decide for yourself whether you think it is dangerous. We provide a reference (to a cross-country flight, for example) because most people probably do not have a sense of what 0.01 Bq/L is vs. 10 Bq/L.
It is also true that there is no such thing as a "harmless" amount of radiation as current models assume a finite chance of cancer per unit dose received. However, when we do point out the small amount of fallout radiation present in Berkeley now, it is based on a comparison to much more common sources of larger radiation dose. The risk is apparently acceptable for the dose received on an airplane flight or simply living in the mountains.
Great service by the UCBNE team
Absolutely agree that UCBNE is providing an independent monitoring service. Nowhere else I am able to find the data at this level of detail for air/water radiation levels in the bay area.
Truly appreciate the info and insight that the UCBNE team is providing.
I posed the initial question to understand why the Japanese are not yet acting on it. Specifically understand if there is any strong technical reason for not doing that and cutting the human losses. The perspectives here are inline with my initial thought...in some way economics (should I say greed) has taken higher priority for Japanese than not continuing to expose its citizens to radiation. Utmost priority should ideally be to limit the damage to human beings...however, in this case, seems like the priority is placed on economics.
Economics has nothing to do
Economics has nothing to do with it. As soon as they started putting seawaters in the reactor, TEPCO wrote off all the value of those reactors. There is no way they will recover any value from the fuel or reactors.
I am not familiar with the technical reasons keeping them from using concrete.